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George HuppertUniversity of Illinois at Chicago (Chicago, IL 60607-3320)

Social Origins of French Enlightenment in the 16th and 17th Centuries

To complete a 2-volume study of the social origins of the French Enlightenment. Volume 1 studied the bourgeosie vivant noblement as a self-conscious, nation-wide class which exerted power through its possession of capital and its near monopoly of government administration and formal education. Volume 2 will examine them as an interest group which becomes disappointed in its expectations and which attacks the inherited privileges of the nobility in abstract terms of liberty, equality, and fraternity while meaning specifically to allude to its own predicament which is to desire recognition in a world where established hierarchies stand in the way of the new class and its pretensions.